The Bewitching Hour

✧ chapter nine: on-call

Pidge does not properly enter her home the moment Hunk leaves. She gives her father a few minutes to process things, gives the air some time to settle, before she makes her entrance. She pretends not to know what is going on. She reacts to the news of the Chieftain's inevitable death as if it is the first, and not the third, time she is hearing it. Normally her parents would likely shield her from this sort of thing. They likely feel that they must inform her if the man is to die in their home.

It's strange, really, that everyone seems so surprised. The Chieftain is very old. But, perhaps, that's the very reason. He has gotten so old that everyone forgot he could die at all.

Pidge doesn't know the chieftain well— she's far too young for that. She can't say that she has any personal stake invested in this. Still, this much change this fast is admittedly frightening. Even for someone as hungry for change and adventure as she is.

"We shouldn't linger on this for so long," Colleen Holt suggests, half-hearted. "I'll make us some stew."

Sam Holt, simple and easy to please as is he is, perks up at that. He will never turn down his wife's potato stew.

Dinner is largely quiet, though Pidge's father does his best to liven things up with a story here and a joke there. Pidge can't seem to force a convincing laugh as she stirs her soup of vegetables with her spoon, suddenly too warm for such a hearty meal and not very hungry. Lance is always the ideal person to have around at times like this, in some strange way, but he isn't here. So Pidge leaves the table early. She can feel her mother's eyes on her back as she goes.

"I worry about her sometimes," Colleen says when she thinks Pidge is out of earshot. Sam laughs. Pidge doesn't know what he finds so funny about that.

Pidge's room is small. She doesn't mind that. And it's only fair, because she also gets the space in the attic. It's cluttered, though, because she's a bit of a pack-rat and can never seem to let things go. Her desk is topped with cool rocks and crystals and plants and things that she fully intends to study, the floor littered with leather-bound books full of the scribbled fruits of her research, and the dresser hides the bounties from her many adventures under a thin layer of clothing meant to hide it.

She crawls into bed with a sigh. The quilted blanket her grandmother stitched for her is as itchy as ever (she wouldn't use any other). Pidge had hoped to fall asleep quickly. She never does, though, and Colleen knows that. Pidge doesn't bother pretending to be asleep when she hears her door creak open, when the light from the hallway bleeds in as a cut through the dark.

"Hey, hun," Colleen greets as she sits on the edge of Pidge's mattress. Pidge, slight as a bird, slides in her direction from the added weight, but doesn't sit up or turn to face her.

"Hey."

"I know things have been... hard lately." That's an understatement. "And I know it probably doesn't help that the house feels lonely these days."

Pidge winces. That is, somehow, the worst thing her mother could have said. The house doesn't have to be empty without Matt in it, does it? She feels a flare of hot jealousy in her blood as she wonders if they'd say the same thing if it was switched. If Matt was home and Pidge was not. But, no, that would never happen in the first place, would it? Matt is allowed to explore, to spread his metaphorical wings, and Pidge isn't. That's that.

Matt leads his own adventurer's guild. That much is known even to her parents. But she constantly has to hide her own membership in Lance's guild, has to make up stories about where she's going even when she isn't going all that far. When her parents do occasionally manage to find out the truth, she is scolded, and sometimes even punished. Is it really just because she's younger? Because they want to protect her? She doesn't know.